Altera, the programmable-chip maker backed by private-equity firm Silver Lake and Intel, is preparing for an initial public offering that could raise more than $2 billion as early as this year, potentially making it one of the largest U.S. semiconductor listings since Arm Holdings returned to public markets in 2023.

The San Jose, California-based company is expected to confidentially file for an IPO in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The listing could come as early as this year, although the timing and size of the offering remain subject to change.

Silver Lake has selected Barclays, Citi, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley as potential underwriters, three people familiar with the discussions said. The final order of the banks in the underwriting lineup has not yet been determined.

If completed, the offering would mark Altera’s return to the public markets after a decade under Intel and provide an early test of the value created since Silver Lake took control of the business.

The potential deal also comes as U.S. IPO activity accelerates sharply. U.S. initial public offerings, excluding special-purpose acquisition companies, raised a record $137 billion through the end of August, according to Dealogic.

Altera’s offering could add to a pipeline of large technology listings. Anthropic could go public as soon as October and is expected to raise about $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Such a transaction would exceed the reported $75 billion SpaceX raise and potentially push total U.S. IPO proceeds beyond the roughly $156 billion record set in 2021.

From Intel Division to IPO Candidate

Altera’s path to the public markets began with Intel’s $16.7 billion acquisition of the company in 2015. The business became fully standalone last September after Intel agreed to sell a 51% stake to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion, valuing Altera at $8.75 billion. Intel retained a 49% stake.

Silver Lake committed roughly $3.3 billion in equity to the transaction alongside Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, which co-invested in the acquisition.

An IPO at a valuation substantially above the $8.75 billion transaction value would therefore represent a rapid increase in Altera’s implied worth under its new ownership structure.

The potential listing also indicates the appeal of separating specialized semiconductor businesses from larger chip companies as investors place greater value on individual growth opportunities.

Altera makes programmable chips that can be adapted for different applications rather than being designed for a single fixed function. Its products are used in data centers, telecommunications networks, industrial equipment, aerospace and defense systems, as well as artificial intelligence applications.

The company has increasingly emphasized AI and robotics as potential growth markets.

Chief Executive Raghib Hussain said in a July interview with Reuters that Altera was “preparing for an eventual public listing” as it pursued opportunities in artificial intelligence and robotics.

The planned IPO would give public-market investors direct exposure to Altera’s growth prospects at a time when demand for specialized computing infrastructure is expanding, while also providing a market-based valuation for a company that spent most of the past decade inside Intel.

A Test for Intel’s Restructuring

The listing is equally relevant to Intel, which continues to undergo a sweeping restructuring under CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Since taking over in 2025, Tan has pursued asset sales, cost reductions and new sources of capital as Intel attempts to restore growth and rebuild investor confidence.

Altera’s separation fits into that broader effort. Intel retains a 49% stake, meaning a successful IPO could establish a public-market valuation for an asset that was previously embedded within Intel’s much larger corporate structure.

Intel has also attracted significant outside capital as it seeks to strengthen its finances and fund its semiconductor ambitions. Last year, the U.S. government agreed to acquire a 9.9% stake in Intel through an $8.9 billion investment tied to previously awarded semiconductor and defense funding.

The company has separately turned to public markets to finance its manufacturing expansion and artificial intelligence ambitions. In August, Intel raised about $20 billion through a follow-on stock offering, one of the largest equity offerings by a U.S. technology company, with proceeds earmarked for capital expenditures and working capital.

The Altera IPO is expected, therefore, to provide more than a liquidity event for Intel. It would potentially demonstrate that assets carved out during the restructuring can command substantial standalone valuations while allowing Intel to retain exposure through its remaining stake.

For Silver Lake, the transaction offers a different test. The private-equity firm acquired control of Altera at an $8.75 billion valuation and is now positioning the business for a public listing potentially worth considerably more. That creates a relatively short timeline between acquisition and proposed IPO, making the deal an important measure of how quickly investors are willing to revalue semiconductor businesses linked to AI, data centers and specialized computing.

The broader market environment is favorable for a deal of Altera’s size. Semiconductor companies have benefited from investor interest in AI infrastructure, while the reopening of the U.S. IPO market has created a more receptive environment for large technology offerings.

But the public market will ultimately judge Altera on its own growth prospects rather than simply its association with Intel or Silver Lake.

The company operates across industries ranging from telecommunications and industrial equipment to aerospace, defense, and AI, giving it a broader addressable market than a pure-play AI chipmaker. Its ability to translate that exposure into sustained growth will be central to the IPO valuation.

The proposed offering consequently arrives at the intersection of three trends: Intel’s attempt to reshape itself, Silver Lake’s effort to unlock value from a former Intel division, and a renewed wave of semiconductor and technology listings.

If Altera proceeds with a $2 billion-plus offering, it would give investors one of the clearest new public-market opportunities to assess the value of a specialized chipmaker emerging from a major corporate restructuring. It would also put a price on Silver Lake’s bet that Altera can grow faster and command a stronger valuation as an independent company than it could as part of Intel.

The Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates by 25 basis points next week and could signal a faster pace of tightening if persistent price pressures increase the risk that inflation will overshoot its target, according to four people familiar with the central bank’s thinking cited by Reuters.

A move to 1.25% would take the BOJ’s policy rate to its highest level in 31 years, marking another significant step in Japan’s gradual departure from decades of ultra-loose monetary policy.

The central bank last raised rates in June, meaning another increase just three months later would point to a potentially quicker tightening cycle. A further hike before the end of the year would strengthen that signal, particularly if inflation and wage trends continue to support the BOJ’s view that Japan is moving toward a more durable normalization of prices.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said many BOJ officials increasingly see the conditions for another rate increase falling into place. The economy is on track for a moderate recovery, while underlying price pressures are strengthening.

Even with a move to 1.25%, the BOJ expects financial conditions to remain sufficiently loose to support economic activity, the sources said.

“With underlying inflation so close to 2%, the BOJ needs to be extra mindful of upside price risks,” one source said, a view echoed by the other sources.

The BOJ raised its policy rate to 1% in June and indicated that borrowing costs would continue to rise if economic and price developments evolved broadly in line with its forecasts. It left rates unchanged in July but warned that inflation risks could intensify as a result of pressures linked to the Middle East conflict, a weak yen and strong demand associated with the artificial intelligence sector.

That combination has complicated the central bank’s policy calculations. The yen’s recent appreciation should reduce imported inflation by lowering the local-currency cost of overseas goods and commodities. But the currency’s earlier weakness continues to feed through to prices, while a renewed surge in energy costs threatens to offset some of the relief from the stronger yen.

Markets Look Beyond The September Hike

A September increase is already fully priced into financial markets, shifting attention toward what BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda says about the path that follows.

Some investors had considered the possibility of a surprise 50-basis-point increase, particularly given the extent to which markets have already anticipated the 25-basis-point move. But the absence of an abrupt acceleration in wages and consumer prices makes a larger increase unlikely, according to the sources.

The more probable outcome is therefore a conventional 25-basis-point increase followed by a period in which policymakers assess incoming data before deciding whether another hike is warranted.

Recent comments from BOJ board member Kazuyuki Masu also point away from an aggressive move.

“Underlying inflation is about to reach 2%, but we don’t see it sharply overshooting that level,” Masu said Thursday, suggesting there is no immediate inflation shock that would require the central bank to deliver a larger increase.

A Reuters poll of analysts shows expectations for the policy rate to reach 1.25% at the September 17-18 meeting, 1.5% by the end of March next year and 1.75% in the second quarter of 2027. Most analysts expect the eventual terminal rate to be at least 1.75%.

But the BOJ itself is not thought to have settled on a specific terminal rate.

The sources said policymakers are likely to judge how far rates should rise based on the delayed effects of previous increases on economic activity and the extent to which companies pass higher input costs through to households. That leaves Ueda with limited incentive to provide markets with a precise timetable for future increases. Instead, he could repeat the message delivered in July that the BOJ could accelerate tightening if it concluded that financial conditions remained excessively loose.

The absence of a predetermined terminal rate also reflects divisions within the BOJ over the strength and persistence of inflation. Some policymakers believe underlying inflation has already reached the bank’s 2% target, while others remain more cautious.

Board member Toichiro Asada dissented from the June rate increase.

The next policy meetings after September are scheduled for October, December and January, giving the BOJ several opportunities to adjust its pace if economic and price data change materially.

Oil Shock Complicates Yen-Driven Disinflation

The latest inflation data are reinforcing the BOJ’s concern about upside risks. Wholesale inflation rose 7.6% year-on-year in August, pointing to mounting cost pressures that could eventually feed into consumer prices. The BOJ expects those pressures to push consumer inflation back above its 2% target in the coming months.

In its July quarterly projections, the central bank forecast core consumer inflation at 2.5% for the fiscal year ending March 2027 and 2.4% for the following fiscal year, before returning to 2% in the subsequent year.

The yen has provided some relief. It has gained more than 6% since Japan and the United States intervened jointly in late July, raising expectations that a stronger currency will reduce import costs.

But that benefit is now being challenged by energy markets. Brent crude has risen above $100 a barrel, threatening to raise fuel and transportation costs across the Japanese economy and potentially complicate the BOJ’s effort to distinguish temporary supply shocks from sustained domestic inflation.

That is likely to be one of the central questions surrounding next week’s decision. A 25-basis-point hike is largely expected, but the more consequential signal may come from Ueda’s assessment of whether rising energy prices are temporary, whether companies are increasingly passing costs on to consumers, and whether underlying inflation is becoming sufficiently persistent to justify a faster tightening cycle.

Currently, the challenge for the BOJ is to normalize monetary policy without tightening so aggressively that it undermines the recovery it is counting on to make inflation durable. The September meeting is thus expected to mark less a debate over whether rates should rise than the beginning of a more consequential debate over how quickly Japan can move toward a higher-rate economy.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is betting that the artificial intelligence boom is still in its early stages, explaining that the chipmaker’s unusually broad reach across the AI industry gives it a view of future demand that few competitors can match.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference on Thursday, Huang reiterated his expectation that Nvidia’s revenue could grow by about 70% next year, extending a record-breaking expansion that has made the company one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global AI investment cycle.

“I think we could grow 70% year over year. We’re confident about that,” Huang said.

Analysts expect Nvidia to generate roughly $400 billion in revenue in its current fiscal year. A 70% increase would put next year’s revenue at approximately $680 billion, an extraordinary level of growth for a company that has already expanded at a pace rarely seen among large technology businesses.

Huang’s confidence comes as questions intensify over how long Nvidia can maintain its dominance. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are developing their own AI chips, while AI companies including Anthropic and OpenAI are also working on custom silicon. Publicly traded Cerebras and startups such as Etched are pursuing alternatives to Nvidia’s architecture.

Huang’s response is that the market misunderstands what Nvidia is actually selling.

“Most people think Nvidia builds a chip. I mean, you need airplanes to ship what we build,” he said.

The comparison captures how Nvidia’s business has evolved from its origins in PC graphics. Its modern AI systems combine processors, networking, memory and software into massive computing platforms that require substantial power, infrastructure and logistics.

“One GPU now is not $399. It’s $8.5 million dollars,” Huang said, referring to the scale of a connected Nvidia system. He described one such system as involving 2 million parts and requiring 250,000 kilowatts, adding that Nvidia ships thousands of them.

Demand, he said, is continuing to accelerate. Orders for a system combining 36 Grace CPUs with 72 Blackwell GPUs are growing by 27% month over month.

Huang’s argument for sustained growth rests on more than current orders. He says Nvidia’s position across the AI supply chain gives it an unusually detailed picture of where computing demand is developing.

“Nvidia runs every model. Every single lab can use us,” Huang said, pointing to models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google as well as open-weight models.

“We are a foundational platform of the AI ecosystem, foundational platform of the AI industry,” he said.

That footprint extends well beyond AI laboratories. Nvidia works with memory-chip manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers, cloud providers, so-called neoclouds, AI-native companies and data-center developers.

“We’re tracking every single gigawatt of land, power, shell around the world. Literally everything on the planet,” Huang said.

In this context, “shell” refers to the physical structure of a data center before it is equipped with computing systems.

Huang said Nvidia is effectively receiving information from across the ecosystem, giving the company visibility into new data-center projects, available power, and expected computing demand.

“I mean, just think about all my partners. How many neoclouds are reporting back to us? How many OEMs are reporting back to us? How many clouds are reporting back to us? How many AI-native companies are reporting back to us? We’re working with everybody, and so we kind of know where everything is,” he said.

That breadth is central to Huang’s argument that Nvidia can forecast growth with greater confidence than a conventional chipmaker. If AI companies expand, cloud providers build more capacity and data centers secure more electricity, Nvidia stands to benefit across several layers of the resulting infrastructure build-out.

But the same interconnectedness has raised questions about Nvidia’s investments in companies that subsequently purchase its products.

The Circular-Deal Question

Nvidia has faced scrutiny over so-called circular arrangements in which it invests in AI companies that use some of their funding to purchase Nvidia hardware. The structure has prompted comparisons with earlier technology investment cycles in which suppliers and customers became increasingly financially intertwined.

Huang dismissed the characterization with characteristic humor.

“Well, it’s not circular because we put a little bit of money in, and a lot of money comes back,” he said.

“I look at the spreadsheet, we put in $1 and $100 comes back in. Is that circular? If that is, let’s do more of that,” he added.

Behind the joke, Huang said Nvidia has a process for assessing companies before investing. He insisted that the companies must have genuine customer contracts generating revenue.

“All told, he said he’s seen $100 billion worth of such contracts,” according to the discussion, adding: “I’m not taking any risks. … I need a sure thing.”

Nvidia’s extraordinary growth is largely tied to the financial capacity of the broader AI ecosystem. AI startups and infrastructure companies are raising enormous amounts of capital, while cloud providers and other technology companies are committing heavily to data centers and computing capacity.

For Nvidia, that creates a powerful feedback loop. More AI development requires more computing; more computing requires infrastructure; and much of that infrastructure currently relies on Nvidia’s hardware and networking technology.

The question is whether that relationship can remain as strong as AI markets mature.

Competition is already expanding beyond traditional GPU rivals. Hyperscalers are developing their own chips, while AI laboratories are exploring custom hardware to gain greater control over cost and performance. At the same time, AI companies that currently spend heavily on computing could eventually become more efficient in how they use infrastructure and tokens.

That creates a longer-term risk to Huang’s thesis. Nvidia’s visibility into industry demand may give it an advantage in forecasting the next stage of the boom, but it does not guarantee that today’s infrastructure requirements will remain unchanged.

The technology industry has repeatedly demonstrated that dominant platforms can eventually be challenged when customers find economic reasons to build alternatives.

For now, however, Huang sees few signs that the AI infrastructure cycle is close to exhaustion. Nvidia’s presence across chip supply, data centers, cloud platforms and AI developers gives it exposure to almost every major source of computing demand.

That helps explain why he remains confident in another year of exceptional growth. The harder question is what happens after that. If AI companies begin prioritizing efficiency over brute-force computing, or if custom chips become more competitive, Nvidia’s advantage could face a different test.